A lot of people ask me how I make my art and what products do I use to create these neon UV photoshoots for example. Obviously, I have to use a camera, which I use a Nikon D600. It's a full frame sensor which does one hell of a job. It's a great starting off camera for the FX lines for Nikon. I have never used Canon so I can't speak to their abilities. The one thing is when you use a DSLR camera for these shoots you need to make sure you get a camera that will have a high ISO range so that you can take good photos with very little light. My art is a trial and error piece and I learn as I go. My first piece, "Neon Dreams" was really difficult to shoot because it was the first of it's kind. When I took pictures my subject I was only using UV light which is naked to the eye so it was literally pitch black in the room. Later, I purchased a small hand-held neon UV flashlight which made it much easier to zoom in on the model with clarity.

I use an Apple MacBook Pro and Apple iPad Pro with an apple pencil for editing. The software I use is Adobe Creative Cloud Suite (mainly, Photoshop & Lightroom). I also use a third party app called "Astropad". Astropad makes it so I can turn my iPad pro into a Wacom Cintiq in theory. I can make edits on my iPad pro and they edit will then translate right into any Adobe program I'm using on my computer. I previously had a Wacom Intuos pro which I personally felt awkward using it. I never felt natural using it because I would never be able to look at what I'm drawing because the device didn't have a screen. I searched the internet for a device that I could use which it would be more intuitive and Astropad did that for me. It made editing a breeze. It costs a small fee $30 or so to purchase from the app store. One the best investments I ever made.

When you spend roughly 13 hours per photo shoot and then countless hours editing your work in Adobe Creative Suite it's imperative that you save your work on multiple locations in case your hard drive fails, etc. I tend to save everything on my 4tb hard drive and then save on my other hard drive later on (RAID hard drive system). When you have clients, the last thing you want to have happened is to tell them you need an extension because your work is ruined or lost. It's never a good look. It's worth the investment.

I hope this helped you. Unfortunately, I make a much different type of art that is not typical in the industry. It's great because I have a unique fingerprint if you will. However, I would search days looking for the type of equipment I would need and it was exhausting. I hope this gives you a better glimpse into my world of art and what type of equipment is necessary to make your mark in the digital art world. I also can't stress this enough, DO NOT GO CHEAP ON YOUR EQUIPMENT, spending that extra $ on quality. Remember, you pay is what you get.

I started creating neon UV photography in college during my photo 1 class. From my personal opinion, I was bored of seeing the same work over and over again during early morning critiques. During our final, my professor said: "You can create anything you want". It was the moment that I was waiting for. I went home started to immediately brainstorm concepts. The one thing I noticed during critiques was that the walls were always the same colors, black, white, gray, etc. I wanted your eye to draw towards my work.

I didn't know at the time, but when you create UV photography it's challenging. Obviously, trying anything for the first time you're facing an uphill battle. When I would take pictures of the model, I couldn't see her, literally. I had to guess and focus the lens on an estimation. As I practiced more and more, I purchased a UV black light flashlight for like $10. Best $10 I ever spent. This tiny flashlight lets me actually focus on her personally so the lens could focus on the subject.

The "Before & After" are the before shots with absolutely zero editing and what happens when I applied Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. It took me hours to edit the piece to become the flawless image you see in front of you. One issue I had originally was that the ISO was so high (around ISO 2600, I believe). When your ISO is that high the "noise" is everywhere. It almost looks like tiny particles all over the screen. The issue with noise is whenever you do any editing to the original piece it's completely noticeable from rough to smooth, it didn't look natural; it drove me up the wall.

After doing further research, I figured how to remove the noise (Reduce Noise and Surface Blur) all tools you can find in Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. Neon UV photography is still uncharted territory and I have much more to learn but, I hope you continue this journey with me and enjoy my work.